


and as you leave

by perennial



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Ending, Character Death Fix, F/M, Grief, Post-Canon, Rest, hypothetical but improbable series epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 06:23:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20466473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennial/pseuds/perennial
Summary: “We used to go there,” Han had said. The cockpit had smelled like old, sun-dried seat leather. He hadn’t said names but they were there in the affection of his tone, in the way his eyes went distant. “You would like it. It’s all green.”





	and as you leave

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ImpShip](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpShip/gifts).

> [how have i not made a note of every word you ever said?](https://youtu.be/_1DgqmqDPPs)
> 
> for impship, in lieu of the hug i can't but would rather give you.

When the war is over and everyone who is going to die because of it has died and everyone else has been imprisoned or freed, Rey waits until no one is looking and goes to the little hidden planet Han told her about all those years ago.

“We used to go there,” he had said. The cockpit had smelled like old, sun-dried seat leather. He hadn’t said names but they were there in the affection of his tone, in the way his eyes went distant. “You would like it. It’s all green.”

It’s not all green now, with summer at its close, swathes of dried golden grass waving to her from the rim of a large lake. The trees are still green, though, and they carpet the sides of the mountain cliffs that stand sentinel around the water. A cottage is nestled in the crook between two sets of foothills. Rey pries open the front door and looks in: it’s furnished, and not as dirty as she might have expected; they fastened the windows well the last time they departed. She doesn’t go inside.

Her saber slashes apart a fallen pine branch as thick as her thigh. She drags it to the lakeside and carves it into three logs.

The sun dips downward, tinting the world the familiar gold of approaching sunset. Rey closes her eyes and presses her hands against the first log. The rough bark digs into her calloused palms. She leans her forehead down to join her hands.

She kneels there for a long time, moving from the first to the second to the third, funnelling her gratitude into a well in her chest, pouring it out in one concentrated stream into the space between her hands. For the lessons, for the gifts, for those things that were neither. Every bright memory she has, every dark one.

_Han._  
_ Luke._  
_ Leia._

On the other side of this life, in that next place, they are no longer lost or angry or alone. No, they are light-filled. Weightless. Together. She wouldn’t call them back from that, not if she could.

She rests her hands over the cuts that divide the logs, so that she touches all three. “I miss you,” she says, voice quiet in the stillness. “Thank you. I love you forever.”

From far across a great expanse: a purple surge of lightning in her palms, tugging at her abdomen, lighting up her heart.

It sweeps through her and then it’s gone, and her soul is a forest washed in rain, bright green and dripping, crisp petrichor rising from the darkened earth. But still water-bent. Still drenched.

Twilight sweeps through the sky and trails star-flecks in its wake. She teepees the logs and lights them. They catch quickly; soon the bonfire is too hot for comfort. The flames leap upward, tiny hands reaching for the triple moons, ephemeral dancers alive for less than a heartbeat. Rey lays on her back and watches the stars move slowly across the sky, white and brilliant and unsullied, close enough to touch with her eyes but forever ungraspable.

-

Morning is soft pale gold. Beads of dew hang on every slice of grass. The flames are long vanished, though the embers are still warm. She waits for the sun to rise and burn away the liquid, then gathers the ashes: charred coins of wood that weren’t devoured by the blaze; soft gray skeletons of coals that crumble when touched; white powder that coats her hands and puffs into the air, making her cough.

She climbs to the top of the tallest cliff that overlooks the lake. The wind blows in gusts, whipping her hair into her eyes. Sunlight scatters rainbow prisms over the surface of the water. The cones of her eyes are saturated with green.

She flings the ashes out into the air. The wind picks them up and carries them away until there is nothing left to see. The air is clear.

Rey breathes in.

-

She goes back to the water and sits in her nest of grass. It seems like a monumental effort to do anything else—like there had been some energy in reserve to see her to the top of the cliff and back down, and now it is depleted, and the hollowed out space left behind has been filled with fatigue as dense and heavy as lead.

Tired. All the way into the marrow of her bones. In every thread of the lining of her soul. A candle burned down to the nub, bent and drowned in a pool of wax. Drained, consumed, nothing left but voids. Her life is constructed of more gaps than solid substance.

She feels so heavy she must surely sink as through clouds through this grass and sand and dirt. She is so tired her body, which she could not move were a thousand red guards to appear before her, moves independent of her control: fatigue trembling from her fingers to muscle fibers so deep she didn’t even know could shake.

Too tired to move, to think, to cry—to do anything but sit in the sunlight and let the warming breeze flick her hair against her face and off again. To listen to the near-silent lapping of the water’s edge. To watch the insects skip across the lake’s mirror surface.

She closes her eyes and lifts her face toward the sun. Light sinks in: past her skin and muscle, past the bone, until it reaches the marrow. It sifts into her veins and is carried up to her heart, where it is poured into her bloodstream, first a trickle, then a flood.

The lake is as still as glass. Fish scales dart beneath the surface. She has never been in a place so quiet. An unheard breeze ruffles the distant treetops. A waterbug touches down on the water with a sound like _bip_. A bird flies above her and she can hear the flap of its wings.

Nothing to carry. Nothing to fix. Nothing to say. Just breathing. Just her heart beating, strong and rhythmic: thuh-dum, thuh-dum, thuh-dum.

-

There is a roar in the sky and a blur in front of the cloudbank. A small silver shuttle drops down, zooms over her head, and descends into an unseen clearing within the trees far behind the cottage.

She breathes out—long and slow, a pressure valve release. All the lightness gathered in her blood fuses and expands.

-

His skin, usually as pale as the triple moons, is red with exertion, bursting with life. She is mesmerized by the smallest movements of his arms. The way his jaw rotates above his neck is an electric shock to her heart. His hair shifts as it falls across his forehead, his fingers stretch and grasp, his body rocks forward on his feet. He takes a long drink of water and it becomes part of him, sent to burrow into his body now, given access to territory that she’ll never chart. She can almost hear the blood pulsing through his body. He is more vivid than she’s ever seen him.

She crosses her arms and leans against the door post. “How did you know where to find me?”

He looks surprised. “I always know where you are.” He frowns a little and swallows. The corners of his lips pull back, preparing to speak; he hesitates. He says, “Don’t you know where I am?”

She has never thought of it as _knowing_, this consciousness she has of him. She doesn’t know she is inhaling; she simply breathes. She doesn’t know she is looking; she simply sees. Given a map of the galaxy, she could pinpoint his location down to his beating heart. Eyes closed and a million miles away, she could carve out the shape of him in the empty air. She says, “Yes.”

He looks at her. His eyes are the clear brown-green of a hidden forest pool. His gaze is steady and unblinking. He doesn’t look away.

There’s fire in the bottom of the pool. She breathes in, out, and receives it. It pours into her, an unstaunched stream, more force than sunlight and firelight and saberlight blended, and she receives it all, all, all.

She looks at him, one long moonlight look. She turns and walks back through the sunshine to the lake.

-

It will take time to fully loosen her grasp on the three of them. She is afraid of what will be lost or exposed if she lets go. Following closely in their footsteps keeps them close. Holding them close means she doesn’t have to look directly at herself, keeps the blank or unfamiliar or uncertain parts shielded. It means she doesn’t have to fully leave the pocket of time when they stood beside her in their full flesh and blood and love.

She isn’t the orphan she was before them. She can’t be the soldier she was with them. She doesn’t know how to be just her.

She sits in the solitude and stillness. She listens. Answers sound like her steady breathing in and out. They sound like her heartbeat. They sound like a flock of waterfowl lifting off from the far side of the lake in a flurry of flapping white wings, honking to each other as they rise, water splashing in their wake.

-

Rey stretches on her nest of soft grass. A blanket has been draped over her.

An insect skims over the water’s surface, leaving tiny footprints that ripple out into dinner plates, into water wheels. The clouds are thin and misty and tinged pink. A spider has built a lace-intricate web between the cattails bent over her head; dew makes it shine as though spun from silk.

The sun of this planet is young. It surges up over the mountain ridge and fills the valley with light as clear as the note of a bell. She wonders how many of these sunrises the cottage dwellers have seen.

The cottage door is propped open and most of the windows too. Scents of baking honeybread and hot bacon waft down the slope to greet her. They tug at her stomach and reel her up to the cottage.

He smiles at her. Everything about him is broad and open as the door, the windows, the sky outside. “Good morning. Hungry?” He slides a laden plate across the table. He fills one for himself and sits on the bench next to her. Then, as though he’s heard her silent wish, he slides closer.

The honeybread is hot and light as air. Rey wonders who taught him to bake. She wonders if he bought the bacon or stole it. She listens to the waking planet: distant bird calls, nearby chirps, buzzing insects. The morning sun slides slowly across the table, cascading over the hand that moves from his plate to his mouth, catching on the dark head bent over it.

-

She doesn’t count the days. It’s a first.

The swollen liquid exhaustion in the trabeculae of her bones is gone; now it is the dense, dark, ancient fatigue in the periosteum that is slowly—slowly—slowly loosening and sliding off, making way for lightness.

With energy comes long-delayed grief. At times it hits like a lightning bolt, screaming through her from her head to her feet. Other times it is more sly, sliding into her abdomen so quick and sharp she doesn’t know it’s there until she sees the blood.

Gone. Her true family. Her almost family. Those most beloved to her in all the galaxies.

Pain is chaos and bitter and never sweet. It isn’t linear or organized or sensical. It is just pain.

But. Oh, but. Love is there, too. Love is the root. Love is the point. She can’t tear out the grief without tearing out the love. She can’t numb the pain without numbing the love. So she lets both rip through her and when she is broken into a million pieces on the ground, it is love that flows in and stitches her back together.

Love is the gift and the patch and the light in the darkness. Love is the gold in the cracks and the mother of hope. Love is the bridge between the end and the ongoing. Love is the layer she’ll carry forward and leave in a bright blazing trail between the stars.

-

She can feel his gaze, but he doesn’t approach the lake shore. He simply watches over her and provides for her needs. Meals, blankets, fellowship. Small things, perhaps, to someone who has never ached for them.

Everyone goes.

Right now, though—

Right now, she has him.

She doesn’t want to ever have to figure out who she is without him. It’s all she needs to know.

-

Warmth. He is all warmth. She presses her face into his back where she can feel his heart pumping hot blood through his body. It is not the old pulsing heat that ate him alive for so many years. That fever broke; she watched it happen.

She fits herself against him like a bracket, so that her ear is near his heartbeat and one arm loops over his chest. She listens to his soft in- and exhalations. His ribs expand and contract. He shifts in his sleep. His heat sinks into her body, warming her all the way through. So many signs of life.

Rey slides into deep, dreamless, strengthening sleep.

-

Movement wakes her: Ben rolling over under her arm. His warmth doesn’t abate; if anything, it gets stronger. He has moved closer to her. She feels his fingers at her temple, brushing the hair off of her face. She opens her eyes.

His are almost green in this light. His hand is still suspended above her. He smiles at her and she sleepily smiles back.

His gaze roams over her face as though mapping it. She looks at his eyelashes, the way they veil his moving eyes. He’s still sliced up in places; she can feel all of the open wounds in his soul: some festering, some clean, some scarred. He can’t heal her and she can’t heal him—but.

Later he will say: “Will you tell me about my parents?”

And she will smile, and say: “If you tell _me_ about them.”

First, though—

His mapping eyes land on her mouth and stop. They flick back up to hers.

She looks at him for what feels like forever. He looks back at her. Just looks, no more. Just breathing and warm in the bed at sunrise, safe and sure and soul-linked.

She hooks her hand around his neck and his arms slide around her. His mouth against hers is everything and nothing: an open door, steady ground, the final word in a long conversation, the first word in a new one. They pull each other close and add their love to the multitude given and shared within the walls of the cottage.

-

When they have talked themselves hoarse and every memory has been remembered and repeated, they fasten all the windows and pack their things. It is time to move forward.

Rey looks around the little cottage. _We used to go there_, he had said.

There is a shift in the room—just a thinning of the boundary between this life and the other side of it, but she knows they are close. She has never felt them as strongly as she feels them now, and somehow she knows she never will again.

She closes her eyes and rests her hand over her heart. Within it are too many words for a mouth to speak, but they can hear them. They know.

They can’t reach back and she doesn’t expect them to. It’s enough to be able to tell them. Someday the sun will rise on the day that she is to join them; until then, it will be for her to carry the lifelong weight that is the price of love. A decent trade, she thinks.

The thinning fades and everything returns to its usual state. She lets out a long, slow breath.

Ben is calling her name from the direction of the shuttle. Rey shoulders her pack, picks up her staff, and pulls the door closed behind her.


End file.
